Destructive partnership

My disappointment in not being home to hear first-hand and witness the Parliamentary debate on the Report of the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) is partially compensated by my glee that the debate has in fact taken place.

We are now one step further down the tortuous road of constitutional reform and Parliament, which initiated it in the first instance, albeit by popular demand, is now very much a part of it. For those of us who have long campaigned for progress in this direction, this is most heartening.{{more}} The challenge is to take it from there, to every nook and cranny of St Vincent and the Grenadines, including our Diaspora. That is no easy task.

Constitutional Reform is not an academic or legalistic exercise. It is not just about examining crusty documents and producing some legal document for Parliamentary sanction. It goes far beyond such narrow approaches and is a necessary pre-requisite for instituting the political and legal framework for modernising our society. Our current political and constitutional make-up is a product of our colonial experiences and pre-independence realities; it needs to be reshaped to allow us to navigate the challenging waters of the 21st century and beyond. It is a strongly held view of mine that political and constitutional reform in the Caribbean has not kept pace with economic, technological and social reforms. Increasingly then, that old framework is becoming a brake to further progress and in some instances more a problem than a solution to the modern-day challenges. It is comparable to us using morse code (how many of our under-forties have even heard this term?) for communication in a modern world of web-based contact.

Let us take one practical example. Qualifications for membership of the House of Assembly are very basic as they should be, theoretically permitting any citizen who can read and write to become a Parliamentarian. However, once a Parliamentarian, any such person, elected or appointed a Senator, can become a Minister of Government. Any elected Parliamentarian can even become Prime Minister, Minister of Finance etc. Are we satisfied that our process of political selection is sufficiently mature to provide us through this route the type of political leadership required in the 21st century?

But back to the debate. I have only seen limited newspaper reports but I welcome the endorsement by Parliament of the proposal to end the monarchical system of government and to have a non-executive head of State. Hardly controversial, though there will be elements who still hanker after a ‘Queen’ or ‘King’. The row over the proposed National Advisory Council of Elders’ (NACE) is however more perplexing. The idea behind it is to provide some element of balanced, non-partisan judgement in guiding the approach to major public appointments and providing advice to our political leaders. One can understand a debate over the composition of the NACE, over its responsibilities etc. but from reports that I have read, it is almost as though our politicians see in it a usurping of their powers. I don’t want to go too far, having not heard the debate myself and thus being able to read the pulses, but all I can say is that we must be careful not to throw out the baby with the bath water. NACE can be a valuable institution, let’s deepen the debate and discussion on it.

Not surprisingly, for me at least, our Parliamentarians, either saw red or turned yellow at the proposal for civil society representation in Parliament. I have heard them at it before, including the boastful words ‘Let them face the electorate if they want to come in here’. How ridiculous can we get! Don’t we have appointed persons in the House, some of whom have become Ministers without being elected by constituents? What makes possible psychophantic membership of a political party a more appropriate qualification for Parliamentary representation that proven and tested service to the trade union movement, the business community, to the women’s movement, community development etc? As for going through the political process, there have always been persons elected to Parliament, not on their own strength but because of party affiliation. The list of those who have passed in and out of Parliament, in and out of Ministerial office, without being able to even make a mark, much more a difference, is a long, and lengthening one.

Even in developed societies today, with a larger human resource base than ours, governments are endeavouring to include distinguished civil society contributors into their fold. One only has to look at recent actions by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy in France to note them reaching outside the narrow folds. That is why our political parties here continue only to attract from narrow base, it is as though they are afraid of other ideas which do not strictly toe the line. This is the level of partisanship which must be strongly combated, it is restrictive and self-destructive. Prime Minister Gonsalves is quoted as saying that ‘partisanship is only bad when it is destructive’.

I humbly submit that we have reached that stage and therefore must take remedial action.